ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the methods of the Hungarian home-birth movement by placing its struggle in a multi-layered international context, and describing how this movement traverses numerous electronic networks and various epistemic communities in both the domestic and the expansive transnational arenas. It investigates the strategies used by a globally interconnected, Internet-enhanced social movement to extract concessions from the Hungarian government. The chapter begins with a brief review of the contribution of the home-birth movement to the literature on social movements in Central and Eastern Europe, and then describes the recent history of the alternative birth movement internationally. It explains how advocates presented a social-media-supported campaign. The contemporary home-birth movement is one of the cases that challenge Howard's broadly accepted, critical interpretation of civil society in post-communist Europe. The modern alternative birth movement emerged in reaction to the trend of heavily technical and increasingly interventionist birth practices in contemporary hospitals.
